World War Z - the Story of an Englishman
by JeffChef
Summary: You've all heard about how most of the world survived (mainly how America survived) the Zombie War - but how about the entire story of one individual? This is the entire story of survival from an Englishman. (This is my first EVER story - so please review!)
1. Chapter I

**Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain**

**(I'm greeted at the door to a modest house in what Geoff Matthews assures me is 'the second smallest town in the country'. It is a coastal town, where one of the hourly ferries makes its' berth. I have just disembarked from the ferry and walked the five minutes to this house: the only relics of the Zombie War here is the monument at the entrance to the alley that leads to the entrance of Yarmouth Castle. Other than these, life seems almost like the pre-war films based in Britain; apart from more allotments and the assorted weapons most people carry.)**

Hello, Hello… Oh, you're American! Well, come on in anyway… Could you leave your shoes by the door? Thanks. Come this way… Anything I can get you? Tea? Coffee?

**(Geoff leads me through the kitchen, introduces me to his wife, apologises that his son is at school at the moment, then takes me to his 'study', his room with a view of a typical English Garden, every wall covered in bookshelves and a post-war computer sat on his pre-war wooden desk. He invites me to take a seat on the sofa and sits on his desk chair, cradling a mug of tea in his hands.)**

So, where would you like me to start?

**At the beginning, if that's okay with you (he suddenly seems to age about ten years.)**

Oh, Okay, then. The first I heard was that Capetown outbreak, it was about halfway through the news broadcast on a BBC radio station and seemed serious, but I thought no more of it. I was seventeen at the time, and just finishing my college year, ready to go to University the next. I'd heard the stories of China starting to go a bit insane over Taiwan, of course, as well as the 'riots' in some Chinese cities that had been swiftly put down… I had no idea what was coming. How could anyone have any idea?

I studied Archaeology at a college in the New Forest… well, what used to be the New Forest…

**But I passed through that on the way here…**

Oh, yes it's still there, just a lot smaller and a long way away from the village my College was in. I can't blame the people there, of course, they needed the wood… Anyway, I was listening to the radio through my earphones on the Ferry in the morning, about a week or two after the outbreak of 'Rabies' in South Africa, when stories started coming of 'rabies' and 'riots' in Jakarta and in other towns, mainly throughout Africa, I started to get a teeny bit worried… but I thought that it would just be like the last disease panic, you know? Endless news stories about how many cases appeared this week, NHS **(National Health Service) **posters in every public toilet… Nothing serious.

Me and my friends thought it was all a bit of a joke, of course, joking about Zombies and the end of the world and where we'd go if there was a Zombie outbreak… back then, it was all a joke.

The first time I got truly very worried was the Israeli message that they were building themselves a big wall and planning to hide in there until the end of time. I thought, as did many others, that it was just in preparation for a new war. The Third World War appeared to be about to break out in China and I thought, with my adolescent surety, that Israel was going to take advantage of the panic that would doubtless spring up over there. Until…

**(He pauses and sips from his mug.) The Paris outbreak?**

Yep. First there were stories on the news about 'rabies' and 'riots' in Paris, about Martial Law and the shooting, and then there was the film footage. A line of soldiers, Policemen and whoever else in a line across some road with the Arc de Triumphe in the background, shooting at a horde of people moving slowly at them…yet so few seemed to fall. I thought at first that they were aiming high to warn the rioters off, but then you could hear someone shouting and then they began to fall… I remember seeing a head being blown clean off its body. But the horde kept coming, and then they reached the line…

Most ran away of course, but the soldiers mostly stayed – and got eaten. There was a close-up of one Zombie tearing out the neck of one soldier, another where a big, beefy man had clobbered three of them down before his leg disappeared, it had been bitten off. It was at that point that the camera, which must have been in a helicopter, was switched off and the people behind the desk in the news stated talking about what this may mean…there were Biologists, Bishops, Policemen, retired soldiers…I remember the ticker at the bottom of the screen: "'Zombie' attacks in Paris… Negotiation attempts fail…Martial Law declared… Government withdraws to Ile de la Cite…" I always wondered why the government went there and didn't try to get out of the city early on, but I suppose the French are insanely proud of their capital, and maybe the suburbs had fallen anyway. I saw on TV, live, the bombing of the bridges connecting the island to the rest of the city, the firefight at some castle or other – apparently that castle held out for the entire war – the boats in the seine being swamped with panicked people, the group at the top of the Eiffel Tower waving at the helicopters, desperate to be lifted off…

It was then that the news channel announced the first isolated incidents of 'rabies' in London and Manchester, and that the army had blocked off the Channel Tunnel as a 'precautionary measure'. We were all glued to the Television for the next few hours, we next heard that the entire armed forces and all the reserves had been mobilised, all transport into the country had been shut down and the Prime Minister was in an emergency meeting with the Cabinet.

**Was this the first time the outbreak had come to Britain?**

I don't think so... there were stories a few months beforehand, things like mad psychopaths and police shootings, I thought it was a resurgence of terrorism at first, partly because the psychopaths were always foreign, then there were tales like some child ended up killing her parents and was found by the police eating her dog, or the time when a 'riot' at a cinema ended in the whole building burning down. It was almost like in Harry Potter when all the wizarding disasters start affecting everyone else but the muggles have no idea what's happening - sorry, I'm a Harry Potter fan.

**What happened after the Paris outbreak?**

It all happened so fast from there. This was, I suppose, what you could call the beginning of the Great Panic in Britain – it wouldn't happen in the USA for another week or so. My Dad, who was in charge of some department in the Isle of Wight County Council, was called in to work – and this was a Sunday! A bank holiday as well! That really highlighted to me the seriousness of the situation. Before leaving he got his shotguns and air-rifles out – he used to go hunting – along with the ammunition, taught my Mum and me how to use them, and then left for Newport **(The then county town of the Isle of Wight)**

**What did he do at the County Council?**

I heard from a bloke who was at the meeting after I got to Yarmouth. Apparently, all the senior managers and directors had assembled in the main meeting room, along with the assistant heads of the local hospital, Police force and Fire department.

**Assistant heads?**

The bosses were all organizing their things - you know, the Police were breaking into the gun shop and arming themselves, there was only one gun shop on the Island as far as I know, not like in the USA. Anyway, orders from London had stopped arriving about an hour before we got the call - the local TA **(Territorial Army - British Army reservists) **had been called north to keep order in Portsmouth and that was the last anyone had heard from Whitehall. They - the Council - decided to ignore the laws and everything and to focus on stopping the 'Rabies' from getting to the Island, and to secure fortresses in case that didn't work. Essentially, with one simple vote, they declared Martial Law...though with an added clause that orders from the British Government would take priority. That clause was never needed - about a week later we got the 'Fend for Yourselves' message from the Government.

**'Fend for Yourselves'?**

I'll get to that after this...anyway, where was I? Oh yeah...well, after declaring Martial Law the Council took over the local radio station which started announcing the new 'regulations' that the Council were churning out. The first one they announced was that the prison would be the 'official' safezone - it makes sense; a building that was designed to keep people in would be easily adaptable to keep people, or _them,_ out. It also allowed the Council to turn all the prisoners into workgangs who went out to help convert other possible buildings: Carisbrooke Castle, Bembridge Castle, Yarmouth Castle, the Cold War bunker near Ventnor... They also shut down the ferry services and the two airports - which were more like airfields, and then they had people patrolling the coast to make sure no-one could land and possibly spread the disease. There were others as well...Rationing, shooting criminals and 'dissidents' on sight... I think that the directors were secretly enjoying it, declaring independence and giving themselves complete power, only to be hailed as heroes when it all blew over... **(He laughs)**

There were isolated outbreaks, but they were dealt with quickly. I heard of some police shootings in Sandown and Cowes, and some other 'Zombies' that had been lynched by just random people almost everywhere else... despite the fact that what was happening was clearly and obviously impossible - I mean, the dead just didn't come back alive to eat the living - The video footage from Paris - as well as the news footage from London and that catastrophe at the Channel Tunnel **(The British equivalent of Yonkers)** had made everyone take the whole situation more seriously - for which I truly thank the fates, because if those preparations never happened then there would have been more deaths - and there were enough during the war anyway.

Law and order broke down in Southampton after four days - you could see the fires from the far side of the island and hear the screams from Cowes. Portsmouth went the day after, at which point we got a phone call from Dad. Mum picked it up, and he managed to tell us to get the hell to Yarmouth NOW before the power went. Mum left to find him, I think she thought that he would need picking up from Newport...

**(A long pause, I feign interest in the birds busying themselves around the birdfeeders in the garden while he wipes his eyes and gathers himself. When our conversation resumes, his voice is only slightly shakier than before, but his face and eyes are very red.)**

She told me to make my own way to Yarmouth... so I packed. I dug out my old school PE bag from the cupboard, and took with me a shotgun, spare ammunition, all the tinned food we had left, a torch, some spare batteries, my mums lighter - she smoked - and then most of my Viking gear.

**Viking Gear?**

Yeah - before the war I was a Viking reenactor - you know, go to an event every few weeks where several like-minded people dress up as Vikings, camp like Vikings and have pitched battles - I believe something similar to do with your Civil War is popular in the United States. Anyway, I had a helmet, an axe, a sword, a shield, and my most prized possession.

**(He gets up, crosses the room to a cupboard door and opens it. Inside is what most people now have in every house throughout the world - armour, tinned food, matches and an appropriate weapon. I see a stained axe, an equally stained and slightly dented sword, a battered round Viking-style shield and, hanging from a bar, a full-length suit of chain-mail. I gasp, get up and have a look at it. The inside is coated in a layer of thin leather, the outside, while shiny, is slightly dented in some places and there's clear signs of repair around the right shoulder.)**

It weighs a ton, and is pure hell to wear in summer, but saved my life more times than I care to count.

**Is all this the stuff you had when you packed that day?**

Yep - All of it except the shield, I got through quite a few shields. You see the axe? It looks like it's useless but it's light enough to be easy to carry but carries enough weight to cave in a skull once I had a bit of exercise. A fire-axe has a straight blade, so you need more force to drive it through a Zombies' noggin **(British slang for a skull),** While you can see that this has a more rounded blade so it penetrates the skull and brain. The limited flange **(he points to the place where the piece of metal thins and widens just behind the blade so the length of metal between the blade and the shaft is thicker and more solid, while the blade tapers and has a longer edge) **means that when I get into a skull it won't get caught on the bone while exiting.

**What about the Sword?**

I had a bit of flak for having that at first - it would be next to useless to actually cave a skull in; the only way it would be effective would be if I went straight through the eyes - but that's what I practiced doing. A few times in a 'battle', if you can call it that, my axe would end up jammed in a head that I then lose behind a new wave of Zed-heads. That's when I back out, let my partner take my place and drew my sword for dealing with any active heads that had got through the shield wall.

**What about the helmet?**

Ha! next to useless! It ended up being melted down to make a new axe for someone. The mail that was attached to it to protect my neck I attached onto a thick fur hat, which I sold after a few years to the people at Carisbrooke.

**(He puts his accouterments away, closes the cupboard door and returns to his chair. I return to my seat.) Did you take anything else?**

I put on thick socks and boots, with a thick coat and a hat - It was Spring but I didn't know how long I'd be holed up in the Castle. I also took my mum's stash of cigarettes; I thought I could use them to buy things off other people - and I did too! I got fairly wealthy by siege standards after the first year, though come winter and scavenging parties and they'd suddenly lose their value. That was about it really.

I first tried to ride my bike there - yes, I had a small motorbike - but there was a crashed tractor at the end of the road that I couldn't get around so I had to walk. It was _horrible! _At the time I was deeply unfit - not fat, you understand, just lacking in any strong muscles. I considered dumping my chainmail but I decided better - I reckoned it was better to be tired and alive then not-so-tired and bitten. It took me about three hours to get here - today I can make the same walk in half-an-hour or less. Not only was it my slow walking though, I also helped a few people.

At first I was the only one on the road, but I could here activity in some houses that I passed - some were arguing, most had the sounds of people hammering wood against their windows and doors, many were quiet. One definitely had moans coming from inside, but as I passed a police van arrived and five men came tumbling out all decked up in hunting rifles and motorbike jackets. It was then I realized that my Biking gear would have been a much lighter burden than my chainmail, but I'd already been walking an hour and the thought of walking all the way back made my head spin.

There wasn't much traffic actually - Everyone knew the Mainland had descended into chaos and we all thought we'd be safe on the island anyway - that was before we realized that water was a useless zombie-block.

**So why were you going to Yarmouth Castle?**

Because my mum had told me too - and I reckoned that if we had had isolated incidents then it won't take much for that to turn into the whole Island being overrun. I also thought it might be fun - live in a castle, albeit a small one, for a few months before reclaiming the Island. I won't deny the heartless thought of the plummeting of house prices afterwards as there will be less people wandering around so less demand - sorry, I studied Economics at College. When I finally did get to Yarmouth I saw that all the boats were gone - every single one. There was a marina, you see, which usually had a lot of boats moored up, but they were all gone. Judging by the fact the entire town was nearly empty I thought that everyone in the town must have got on a boat and left - the ferry was gone too.

**The town was empty?**

Mostly; there were some people still in their houses, boarding up the windows and doors, and there was a group in the church who were building up the wall that surrounded the cemetery, and then the group in the castle.

The castle isn't what you'd expect a 'normal' castle to be; partly as it was built in the Tudor period by Henry the Eighth, about a hundred or so years after the famous medieval castles. It was also designed to provide a defensive position to stop French or Spanish ships from making their way up the Solent and reaching Portsmouth, not as a center for a feudal lord. It's all one stone-built building, no wall or anything outside...

Actually, imagine a cube, and that's the castle. On top of the cube is a rectangular prism - you know what I mean? The prism is the same length as the cube but about a third of the cube's width in... width. This prism is to one side of the top of the cube so that the second floor is made up of one third building and two thirds gun platform, the platform faces the sea while the 'inside bit' is on the end facing inland. The platform used to have a few cannons, but when the Zombie War started there was one cannon on a wooden garrison carriage, two more empty garrison carriages and a few wooden picnic benches. It was all grassed over as well, so we managed to grow potatoes and carrots on it - even an apple tree!

Anyway, when I arrived there was a group of ten prisoners, all in a chain-gang and lorded over by a **(expletive removed)** of a Prison Warden, and about twenty more other people, mostly like me. The Prison Warden lorded over things first - he gave us all a small patch of floor in which we put our stuff and would sleep in, and then he had us all start sawing up the wooden benches to make the door thicker - there were no windows any human-sized thing could get through. He'd shout at us if he thought we were slacking, threatening us with being left outside when the Zombies turned up...

The next day he kicked us all awake, and before we could do anything he sent us out to 'requisition' food and other equipment from the town - we were to find a lorry, fill it with everything that would be useful, and then park it in the alleyway so that the big doors into the trailer would be about two meters away, and facing, the Castle door. This wasn't too hard - a few houses had been abandoned by now so we kept to those - one or two other houses had several families boarded up inside - as did the church, remember. There had been an empty lorry left on the tarmac, obviously waiting for the ferry before they were shut down, and the driver had buggered off somewhere. We found some great stuff as well - camping stoves, bottles of gas, gardening tools, bags of seeds, large barrels for water, as well as food. For some reason, the other 'compounds' hadn't picked through the buildings like we had - perhaps they thought that it would all blow over and they could go back home quickly. We even found a shotgun and loads of ammunition. Someone found a flag as well - a Red Ensign **(British maritime flag for private craft - a red flag with the Union Jack in the top-left** **corner)**, which we flew from the flagstaff. I don't know why we chose to fly that flag in particular - there was a perfectly good Union Jack at the end of the pier, but I think we wanted to declare ourselves 'British' but not quite - like a colony if you like.

It was that afternoon the fires in Lymington started - the town immediately across the Solent. You can see it clearly from Yarmouth. we never found out exactly what happened to start the fire, but the warden said something about 'slow-moving people' after he looked through his binoculars. He got very angry when we couldn't fit the lorry into the alley - as you saw the road is very narrow - we couldn't turn the lorry enough to be able to reverse it into the alley, the way he wanted. We tried to tell him it wasn't possible, but then he really lost it. He pulled a truncheon out and started threatening us if we didn't so as he said, and then Alice - a girl about a year or two older than me - stepped forward and told him, quite plainly, that threatening us wasn't going to achieve anything. He shouted back at her, saying that he was in charge and if he wanted something done, it was going to be done.

Then he hit her round the head - quite hard too. She fell to the floor - unconscious, and then all hell broke loose. I think all the other 'civvies' liked Alice and were feeling protective of her - her pregnancy was just starting to show - and the warden ended up running, well limping, away with several sizable gashes on him and probably a broken arm. Then Ago went over to the prisoners, and told them in his accented English that they can go if they want, or they can stay. they all went off.

**'Ago'?**

Oh, he was called Agathonas, but we all called him Ago. he was an old Greek bloke - big white mustache and Einstein-like hair. A man of few words, though I think that might be because he didn't speak English very well. Really nice man as well - and epic in a fight. He's dead now, died about a week after Greece declared itself free. He never stopped smiling all that week, he'd be on the phone every day, talking in rapid Greek, and then on Saturday he just didn't wake up. This was after we had been liberated, of course.

After that, Ago became our leader. We'd all do our own thing, working together to stock up and fortify, you know, but whenever he had an idea and said so we'd all drop what we were doing and make it happen. Supporting a crane-like thing over the side with a bucket attached to gather sea-water like in a well, that was one of his ideas. We boiled the water under a sheet of metal - fresh water would condense on the metal which we'd then siphon off to drink. The salt was used to preserve meat.

**(I ask if they kept meat at the castle, but he avoids answering)**

Anyway, we had a wind-up radio - the electricity had stopped a few days before (did I say that already? I think I did) so we found one - and it was through that we heard the famous 'Fend for yourselves' broadcast. I have a recording here actually. **(He gets out an old cassette tape and puts it in his vintage tape player on a shelf. The recording is crackly but the words are clear. The voice reading what sounds like a written script is that of a young male, speaking in perfect 'BBC English' with a definite waver in his voice)**

_"This is a message to all the subjects of Her Majesty, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Vast swathes of Britain have been lost to the Resurrected. Various Religious groups are declaring this 'The End of Days', but we urge everyone - Everyone - not to panic. The Government is with...withdrawing...from London, and will relocate to Inverness, in northern Scotland. All elements of the Army, Navy and Air Force that are able to relocate are to move to this area, or to the Isle of Man, immediately. The Emergency Cabinet has declared the formation of Supreme Command, with the primary directive to reclaim all lands of the United Kingdom as soon as possible. All Army, Navy and Air Force personnel that are unable to move to the Antonine Zone or to the Isle of Man are to assist civilian groups in defense against the Resurrected. We do not know the duration until Britain can be liberated. To all groups of civilians and Government Personnel who are unable to get to the Antonine Zone or the Isle of Man, we have only this to say: you must Fend for Yourselves."_


	2. Chapter 2

**(After he takes the tape out of the machine, there is a ringing silence in the room)**

**Was that the last you heard from the government?**

For the next… year and a half, yeah.

**Did you know how they were getting on?**

We had an idea, of course, all the ships and boats you saw in the sea those days had something to say to us over the radio – One bloke, Rob, did the age-old thing of hooking a bicycle, minus its wheels, to a generator to make electricity. We mainly powered the two-way radio and the freezer with it. Anyway, small boats and some bigger private craft would often wander into the Solent – some had run out of power, others were 'just looking around' and some landed on shore to scavenge – and they nearly always had a friendly word to say to us. We traded with some, people as well as other stuff-

**People?**

Oh, not like slaves, No! That first Grey Winter when all the Zed-heads had frozen we were free to do what we wanted. A small cargo vessel – the sort of thing that would wander between the Scottish Islands, only it flew a Croatian Flag – turned up one morning and said over the radio that there were a couple of 'Britishers' on board who would like to land. I don't know why they didn't make their way to the Antonine Zone – though they were Isle-of-Wighters' so perhaps they wanted to get home. Anyway, one or two of our group were sick of castle life and so joined the crew of that ship to sail away, so we essentially swapped two complainers for two hard-working sailors – we didn't mind.

**Do you know what happened to that ship?**

As a matter of fact, yes. During the early days of the 'Maritime Sweep & Clear', when they were identifying all of the refugee ships and abandoned hulks about halfway through the 'March to New York', that ship was found off the coast of Argentina, powerless and full of Zeds.

**Ah.**

Exactly.

**You said 'nearly always', were some ships hostile?**

Yep. Some never replied - either they'd utterly run out of power or they didn't speak English, but others would reply with something like this **(he gets out another tape to put in his cassette player. Seeing my expression, he laughs) **We all had a hobby in that castle - mine was woodwork, but Alice's was recording all of the messages we sent and received - apart from Radio Free Earth and the regular BBC broadcasts. When I told her you were coming here she lent me these. Anyway...

**(The voice is speaking in heavily accented English, perhaps eastern European) **

"_This is Captain Petrescu of the MS Mangalia. We have you outnumbered and outgunned. Stand down and prepare to be occupied."_

This was a medium-sized cargo vessel - she wasn't flying any flag and I haven't found any ship in recent times that used that name, but we were definitely outnumbered. There were roughly twenty of us versus at least fifty of them, from what we could see on their deck. I think the captain had delusions of being a pirate, raiding settlements and other ships.

**What did you do?**

We did what he told us to do - prepare. We kitted up, sent out a message to Carisbrooke Castle just to warn them, then sat tight. Our plan was to wait until they landed - they had small boats but the only place in the immediate area they could land was the slipway - the boardwalks in the Marina had long gone dangerous.

**When did this happen?**

Oh, Sorry! This was... about two months in. We'd gathered a moat of Zeds by then but we reckoned we were impregnable - the door had about thirty locking bars and God knows how many chains across it - all of it our work. We had a big piece of plywood studded with nails ready for this to happen (we had a lot of free time to plan every conceivable situation), which we put on the floor just behind the door in case they - the pirates - got through. I was the lookout to tell them what was happening - I got shot at from the ship at first but I heard shouting and they stopped - I think to preserve ammo. All fifty bundled into two small boats the ship was towing and then they rowed to the slipway.

They never got there. There were several Zeds underwater that seemed oblivious of our moat - perhaps they couldn't hear the moans from our lot, being underwater - but they noticed the boats alright. I heard shouts and screams, then the men started shooting into the water and reaching down to try to hit the Zeds with hammers or something. The water all around the first boat was all frothy as if it was a hot tub. First one man was pulled in, then the entire boat was capsized. The screams didn't last very long, which was a relief. The second boat hadn't got to shallow enough water to be attacked yet, they turned tail and went back to the ship.

**Then what happened?**

We disassembled our 'human attack' gear, told Carisbrooke that all was OK and that was that.

**Hang on, we've got a bit sidetracked...**

Oh, yes. Sorry.

**So, back to where we were. What happened after the 'fend for yourselves' broadcast?**

That marked the end of law and order on the Isle of Wight for the next seven years. The Council did a good job of covering up how bad the situation was on the Island for the next few weeks, but we heard from the few people that turned up asking if we'd let them in. We always did at first, until later when we had to tell them to try their luck elsewhere when we started to get worried about the supply situation. Fortunately, I suppose, a few people just died when asleep for no apparent reason, and some others left to try to go somewhere they liked.

Anyway, I saw my first ever Zed, in the flesh, in the third week. The local radio station had gone down and we hadn't heard anything from the Council. The police presence that there had been had just vanished... though not after they had a gunfight with one of the groups in a house - they'd been chaining up their reanimated loved ones instead of killing them and the police had an issue with that. On the Wednesday of that third week - the police had left on Sunday - I went up to the second story to look out and there was one coming out of a house-door. This was one of the houses we'd cleared under the orders of that Prison Warden and I'd never seen anyone else go in, so God only knows what that Zed was doing there, and He hasn't told me yet. He-it was an oldish man, wearing typical civilian survival clothes - camouflage trousers, jacket, wide-brimmed hat - and with a little bit of a podgey belly. He can't have heard anything from our hideout because he ambled slowly down the road towards the Church, and I lost sight of him then - there were a few buildings in the way. About an hour later I heard a gunshot from the direction of the Church.

We spent those quiet days working. My mum was a garden designer so I'd picked up a few things and Rob knew a lot about gardening - it was quite funny really, he was a great burly bloke with a hat and a huge beard, tattoo's galore on his arms and a Hells-Angels-style biker, knowing about gardening and nearly breaking down in tears when his petunia's died - so we got more soil from the local gardening center and gardens, read up on 'How to Grow an Allotment' and 'Allotment Growing for Dummies', and planted our first spuds, carrots and a few other things on the grassed-over gun platform. Because the gun platform is really quite exposed we found big pieces of plywood and built a wall around the garden to protect it from the wind, then we built a kind of scaffolding on the inside to support the plywood in high winds. We made shutters for the windows, an armory of weapons made of things like fence-posts, pickaxes and large hammers, an obstacle course in the area just inside the door so that if the Zeds got in there were some obstructions to them getting through, and a host of other stuff. I suppose I'm boring you, aren't I?

**Not at all, the more detail the better.**

Really? Okay then. Let's see... We built fences in the alleyway to stop too much pressure building up on the doors - a bit like with the lorries protecting the doors in that pre-war zombie film where they hole up in a mall. There was that water crane I mentioned earlier, extra supports for the roof when we feared it might cave in after a really heavy rain, separate 'cabins' for each of us-

**How quickly did you work?**

Oh, this wasn't in the first few weeks before we attracted a moat, this was for the whole time we were there. We had lots of time, so we often occupied ourselves with making plans for every conceivable event: fires, floods, the Zeds getting in, attack by people, disease, bad harvests, crumbling masonry... loads of plans. All of them written on paper and stored in the 'library', which was a small room which we fitted with shelves and filled with all things paper-based: categorised, files and books, fiction and non-fiction... We spent a lot of time focusing on fire, as so much of our work on the inside was made of wood. We had buckets of sand and water in every room and corridor, and an evacuation plan.

**Evacuation plan?**

We were in contact with the rest of the world, as I said: Ships, the remnants of the Council at the Prison, the group in Carisbrooke Castle... we even talked to the Government of the Channel Islands by relay a few times a year. Anyway, we'd heard of those disasters at those other castles and forts, Britain and abroad; like that place where they all died of disease, or that fire at Avignon. So we all got together after hearing of what new disaster had struck some group somewhere and planned what to do if the same should happen to us, so we came up with an evacuation plan.

It was quite a good plan as well. The building next to the castle had a locked door and a flat roof; we managed to string a rope bridge across the garden in between using a grapple, then we fortified that building before using it for stores. The Zeds didn't build up around that building because, while the person going across the bridge into the building would always attract some, he - or she - would always come back again, drawing the Zeds back to the nearly impregnable Castle. It was impregnable that side anyway - there was no door and there was a building butting up against the castle between the castle and the alleyway. What we did was go over in a pair, then one person would come back immediately while the second did what they went there to do - find something or put something away - who would then come back drawing any leftover Zeds. The evacuation plan involved us getting to that second building, piling into the lorry - the building was a vehicle workshop and we managed to get a lorry in there because the road widens - and then driving off towards the Prison or Carisbrooke Castle. We all carried whistles to warn each other of an emergency, there was a big bell we'd clang at night time and we even had practice drills.

**What else did you do while under siege?**

All the things like watch films and listen to the radio, obviously. After we made contact with Supreme Command they dropped in some stuff by helicopter - cheap stuff like survival kits and an old TV. We hooked the TV up to the bicycle and watched the evening programs every night. It's weird, almost the entire world had been lost to the undead, what was left of the living was struggling for survival and yet TV companies all around the world did very well - the BBC included. It was all transmitted by satellite from where it was filmed to the broadcasting base of each safe zone where it was then rebroadcast - our broadcasting base was obviously in Inverness. We didn't have a great picture, what with the distance and all, but we enjoyed ourselves, which was the enitre point.

**What programs were available to you?**

Didn't you watch TV during the war?

**Well, yes, but I was in America and in the safe zone. I thought it would be interesting to know what a blue zone in Britain would have had in terms of Television.**

'Blue Zone'?

**American code for a Civilian fortress not in the safe zone.**

Ah, right. Well, we had all the BBC documentaries, old pre-war stuff they'd kept on tape and had got up to Scotland. I think every year in Winter they sent a team down to London to get some more tapes, there was always more variety come spring every year. There were nature programs, cooking programs, some show about three middle-aged men who act like six-year-olds in cars all day, Doctor Who, the rubbish soap operas that I never watched, the news, obviously, comedy panel shows - one program which was really popular here before the war, where a famous gay cleverclogs sits on a panel show with four other comedians, with one regular who they continually took the mickey of, continued production right through the war and beyond. The set changed of course, but it was always very funny. Watching it, with them joking around while telling you interesting but useless stuff, you'd forget the Zombie Apocalypse had happened and you'd think you were just with some mates in a sitting room, huddled around mugs of tea and with not a care about how the weather might affect the harvest. The only problem with that was after the show had ended, reality would come back to you like a boomerang the weight of a battleship.

There were foreign programs as well. Those films about how 'America is Awesome' and 'Technology will Save the Day' and 'We will Win this' that came out of the Rocky zone were aired over here - I must admit they were very good. Cuban television programs started appearing about a year before the Honolulu conference, all dubbed in English, or at least with English subtitles. The film makers in the Unified Alps Zone threw stuff at us as well - including a french remake of 'I'm a Celebrity', only in the pine forests of Switzerland, not the Jungles of Australia, or wherever it was it used to be filmed.

The Radio we'd have on all day. There was always a breakfast show, on weekdays presented by one well known ginger radio DJ - I can't mention names can I?

**Ideally not.**

Right. Well, even though there was only one radio channel during the war maintained by the BBC it mostly followed the format of the most popular BBC radio channel before the war. The ginger broadcaster I mentioned had the breakfast show until half-past-nine, from then there was some bloke who hosted a quiz until midday after which there was a talk show. I avoided that show like the plague before the war - sorry, bad expression - because of all the nutters that would phone in and give their bigoted opinions on how the world should be run even though they didn't have any experience in running the world, but on war-time scheduling it was much more lighthearted, about things like what colour to paint a baby's room or peoples tips on getting a fire started. The talk show finished at two 'o' clock, after which it then changed every day. On Mondays there was a comedy show, Tuesdays had gardening and cooking, Wednesdays was just endless 'lift' music, Thursdays was comedy again and Fridays was a drama show. This was all until five, when there was 'drivetime' which would go on for two hours barring special events, after which the schedule changed daily again. Mondays was Jazz, Tuesdays was, again, comedy, Wednesdays was drama, Thursdays was Country Music and Fridays was 'Friday Night is Music Night', where an orchestra played all sorts of things, from film soundtracks to orchestral pieces to versions of modern songs.

**And on the weekends?**

You're not bored yet? Well, Saturday was mostly devoted to more talk shows and sketches, while Sunday mornings was a church service broadcast to the country **(he pulls a disapproving face) **and Sunday afternoons was more music. On all days the news was every hour, while every half-hour was some tip or advice for survival - how to purify water, reminders that Zeds couldn't be negotiated with, the sort of barricade that would or wouldn't work against a Zed... you wouldn't believe how many people thought nothing more than an electrified fence would stop a horde coming at you.

**How did you power the radio all day?**

With the bicycle rigged up to produce electricity, like I told you. The person on 'watch' would cycle for about an half-hour, which built up enough power in the battery to last another quarter hour running the radio, or ten minutes if it was the radio and the freezer. The person would then go around the Castle, make sure everything was tickety-boo and then keep cycling. We exercised, it kept us awake during the night shift... It was a really good idea we had.

**Sounds like you had a good time-**

Well, not entirely. I mean, sure we survived, and when we got out we weren't as thin and malnourished as a lot of other people who had holed up in castles were, but we weren't living the high life, not compared to Windsor or Beaumaris, or that Disney-like castle in France. We had one square meal a day, with a small something, maybe a scrap of homemade bread, for breakfast and the meal itself as night was drawing in. We had disease outbreaks, Alice's second child was a miscarriage, the old woman who was a massive anti-immigration bigot before the war, but was always talking to Ago while under siege, died for no apparent reason. A lot of people we picked up, from ships or who had turned up by land, fighting their way through our moat, died for no obvious reason. It was winter that saved us, it gave us a task to plan for for the rest of the year, kept us busy when we would have been bored and helped distract us from the petty squabbles that inevitably appeared.

**What kind of petty squabbles?**

Oh, everything and anything. What colour to paint the table; religion; how long our supplies will last; what to say to any ships we got talking to... It was kind of fun because I did my best to keep out of it, and I just watched everyone else spit at each other over whether carrots or potatoes were better to plant. I often played chess with Ago at these times - he kept out of the arguments as well. Often, when we were planning where to go come the first frost, we'd all end up in shouting matches.

We had a system of leaving the Castle on the second day of there being frost on the ground when we wake up, because then the Zeds in the moat were frozen, but would defrost by the afternoon. On the day of the first frost we all prepared our gear and made ourselves packed lunches. On the second day, we'd all go out in two groups, leaving a third group behind in the castle. They'd occupy themselves with caving in the heads of the frozen Zeds and doing repairs or fitting stuff onto the outside of the building - things we couldn't do while the Zeds were awake. Each group that went out - we always called them the 'A-team' and the 'B-team', had supplies to last about a week and each person hauled a wheelbarrow or wagon or...something. We'd walk until we noticed the frost was starting to clear, then find ourselves an abandoned house and fortify it. That house would then become our temporary warehouse. every day after that, except for Christmas day, we'd go out in smaller teams from the houses and pick up whatever we could find that was on our list or we thought would be useful - food mainly, but lots of other stuff like wood or blankets or clothes.

**What happened on Christmas day?**

We'd all head back to the Castle on Christmas Eve, A-team and B-team each pulling our own Christmas tree, as well as whatever Christmas decorations we scavenged and some food for the feast. C-team, who were the ones left at the Castle, would choose which of the two Christmas Trees were better, and that one we erected in the main room just behind the doors. By then, of course, the frost or snow was all day so there were very little active Zeds. We'd decorate the tree and the rest of the castle, still using the bicycle to power the Christmas lights as the freezer could be turned off - we put the food to be frozen in buckets of water outside. The next day we'd each open our presents, then have a feast in the evening, while listening to the BBC Christmas broadcast on the Radio. There was the Queens' Speech at one-o-clock on Christmas day, then all sorts of good shows, as well as a church service in the morning. The next day, A-team and B-team would go back out to keep scavenging, often we found a new house to fortify as we'd picked clean the area around our first fortified house already.

**Were there any problems with the winter months? **

Hell, yes. In the last few years before we were freed we were finding it very difficult to find anything useful anywhere near our area, which meant we had to stray further afield - sometimes by up to three days' walk. We often encountered scavenging groups - more so in the later years as we went further, and those meetings were varied. Sometimes the other group would run away, sometimes we would if we were vastly outnumbered - we tried not to take too many chances. There was fighting on occasion, and that was scary at best.

**Can you describe one of these fights?**

Yes, I suppose. I was in the B-team in the second year, and Rob was in command - we all called him 'Sergeant'. We were in a small town near here called Freshwater, and had just picked clean a supermarket that was bizarrely untouched. we were all leaving, pulling our stuff, when down the road we saw another group of people about the same size as our group walking up the road towards us, pulling and pushing their own stuff. Rob told us to push our trolleys back into the supermarket and get our weapons out - out of a group of eight of us we had two shotguns, an air rifle, I had a bow and several arrows which I had made myself, and the other four had axes and swords. We all had shields - of the kind you saw in my cupboard, you know, round with the boss in the middle. We all got our gear out, and armored ourselves with the usual kit - chain mail, biking gear, gloves, that kind of thing. We held our weapons in a non-aggressive way, slung on our belts or over our backs, so that when they noticed us they knew we weren't going to kill them out of hand. As it turned out, that's what they were planning. They stopped when they saw us, seemed to have a quick conversation and then started gearing up themselves. That's when Rob told us to get into the supermarket. We went in and then formed a barricade - we completely blocked one exit with several shelves and the other was barricaded, so they'd come in and we'd have a clear field of fire, while not exposing ourselves.

**(As he is talking, he visually becomes more animated so that the mildly tempered man I was talking to becomes slightly more feral)**

They were walking towards the supermarket as we were doing this, so that by the time we were pointing everything we had at them they had reached the car park. There were nine of them, and they all seemed to take orders from someone they called 'chief', They had one more gun than we did, though they didn't have shields or a barricade - our shields were all in the barricade. One of them fired a shot at us before even trying to talk, and it hit my shield - it was obviously an air rifle as there was no bang and the pellet didn't go through. Rob, who had the one shotgun, fired and took out one of them, and then all hell broke loose. From what I can remember, they all tried to charge us through the door and then hack us down once inside, while the ones with the guns killed our guns. I shot my bow and got nearly always perfect headshots - I had practiced on Zeds so I was pretty good. Then again, so was everyone else there that day. We put down their charge, and then we just traded shots for about half an hour before they yelled at us that they were going to leave now, and would come back the next day with more people so we'd better get out while we had the chance. We waited another half hour, then ran out screaming with shields up in case it was an ambush. They'd gone. We scarpered ourselves, we didn't want to be wiped out when they returned and the frost was clearing, as we were walking back to our base I saw several partially defrosted Zeds, their heads snapping but otherwise stuck to the floor.

**(At this point a small boy comes running into the room wearing a school uniform. He stops dead at the sight of me. Geoff apologises, invites me to listen to the other cassette recordings and then leaves with his Son. Geoff checks on me every half hour – by the time I'm finished it has gone dark outside. He escorts me to the door and promises that we will meet the next day)**


	3. Chapter 3

**(The next day, after staying in a small, bedbug-ridden room in a pub in the small town, I knock on Geoff's door again. As before, he offers me tea and leads me to his study. We sit in the same places as we were in the day before.)**

**So, Geoff, carrying on from yesterday, the year and a half alone wasn't too bad by most standards?**

No! For a start, most of us survived those eighteen months with no major disasters, unlike so many other places in the country - in the world, even. I mean, yes, we did have a minor fire that we put out within minutes, and then one of my contraptions collapsed while we were putting it in, breaking Ago's leg - it never did heal properly, though that old woman used to be a nurse - but all in all, we got off lightly. Not like those poor sods at Versailles or those people who tried to fortify the Tower of London in the winter. As well as foraging that first winter we established contact with the other large survivor groups on the Isle of Wight; the remains of the County Council in the prison and the group in Carisbrooke Castle. The old fort in Bembridge got overrun at some point beforehand - no-one ever heard anything over the radio from them, but the smashed door and the corpses inside were a good clue as to what happened.

There were a few lonely survivors we came across as well - I remember meeting a college friend who'd catch the ferry with me every day before the war, who had converted the Fire Station in Freshwater into the best anti-Zed fortress made out of a building with very few defensive features that I'd ever seen. All on her own she'd got crops growing on the flat roof, a chicken run in the administration office and had a clever system of dropping rocks off the drill tower at whatever was moaning at her below. she decided to join our group when we showed up - she'd got very lonely in her fort, but we used the Fire Station every year after that as our winter warehouse whenever we were in the Freshwater area. Seven years and there was never a breech into the Fire Station, while we had a total of two at our Castle. We would have moved the entire group into the station but it was too small for us, and Yarmouth Castle was beginning to feel like home anyway.

We set up dedicated phone lines between our three fortresses in the second winter - there was a cable layer in Carisbrooke so he knew what to do. That effort, with each fort providing some workers to establish permanent communications between our groups was what I think of as the start of the reunification of the castles in Britain - did you know that we were the first county in England to be entirely liberated from the Zeds? I think several fortified mines in Wales had set up cables to each other in the first winter, and the castles that weren't too far away from the Antonine Wall had cables connecting them to the Government the first winter as well, but we still achieved something quite remarkable. The welsh mines still ran themselves as independent little Chiefdoms despite the network, while the government allowed the Castles they got in contact with to run their own affairs, while we started operating as a unified Island again. We communicated by Morse code through the cables - it was easier than having a proper telephone, we just had to send pulses of electricity by using a button. We'd receive updates from the other two forts and occasionally an order from the Council, but mainly we just talked about random stuff, like the TV program the day before. We even had a few chess and battleship tournaments! Ago won the chess every time.

It was the second winter when we made contact with the government in Aberdeen. I was asleep when I heard Alice shouting at us: "Guys! GUYS! Get up you lazy sods!" I thought it was an emergency or something -I shot out of bed and ran to where Alice was sat with her headphones on, playing with the frequency dial on our radio. I asked her what's up, but she shushed me and kept playing with the dial. Then, after we had all gathered around the radio in the main room she unplugged the headphones and plugged in some speakers instead. I have the conversation here...

_"-tain Beardshaw of HMS Montrose. Is anyone receiving me? I am in the service of Her Majesty's Government, currently operating from Aberdeen. If any groups of survivors are receiving me, please respond..."_

_"This is Yarmouth Castle, calling HMS Montrose. Where the bloody hell have you been for the last eighteen and a half bloody months!?"_

_"Clearing the Antonine Zone of Zeds. We put to sea two months ago, until then almost the entire navy was playing Army, wandering around half of Scotland killing Zed-Heads."_

_"Oh, right. Are we glad to hear you! What's the situation in Britain?"_

_"It's good to hear you to. Much the same as the rest of the world. The safezones of the Antonine Zone and the Isle of Man are stable, joint operations with the Irish government are just beginning, so Ireland should become a large safezone within a few years."_

_"I thought Ireland was safe?"_

_"Not really. We pulled into Limerick on our way here, and the entire country is limited to walled towns and castles. the Limerick zone is a fenced-off area around a bridge, operating out of a castle. Ireland is relatively safe because of the sheer number of fortresses, though most cities and the countryside are overrun."_

_"What's happening in the Antonine Zone?"_

_"In essence, safety. Everyone grows their own food now, and a great many ships have been converted into floating apartments or farms. The entire area is split up into parishes, each with an elected mayor and an appointed Sheriff, the former runs the community and the latter maintains law and order. The Prime Minister went missing during the Evacuation -"_

_"No great loss there-"_

_"- so the Head of Government is General McCuster, who also heads Supreme Command."_

_"I thought they were one and the same?"_

_"Technically no, in reality yes."_


End file.
